


Media Vita In Morte Sumus

by jezziejay



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst, M/M, Original Character Death(s), With A Twist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-01-15 22:40:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21260792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jezziejay/pseuds/jezziejay
Summary: In the midst of life we are in death.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Very short, somewhat twisty thing that I didn't have a lot of time with. But, hey, Happy Halloween.

Life is standing on the observation deck of the surgical theatre when Death finds him.

“Nobody called for the grim reaper,” Jon says without turning around. 

There’s a soft snicker from behind him. “I’m omnipresent, I don’t need to be called.” 

Patrick’s shoes make no sound as he crosses the floor, stopping when their arms brush together. Jon’s eyes shutter closed, and he inhales the scent of the man beside him, clean and fresh, like citrus soap. He likes it when Patrick smells like this, when there isn’t blood and decay and bone permeating from his skin.

“You can’t have him,” Jon says, insistent. His eyes open again and he looks down at the doctors and machines that have swallowed up the four pounds of human baby they’re trying to save. “He’s not for you.”

Patrick clucks his tongue. “I took his mom less than an hour ago.”

Jonny nods, his eyes still on the scene below him. “And that was more than enough. You don’t need this one, too.”

“Sometimes it isn’t about what’s needed.”

“He’s still breathing.”

“For now,” Patrick says, quiet. “It might be best --”

“Not this time. _He’s not for you_. And I really don’t want to hear any of your fridge-magnet pearls of wisdom right now.”

“Shame,” Patrick says. “I have some great new ones. Like, life hurts a lot more than death. Or, life is pleasant, death is peaceful, it’s the transition that’s difficult.”

Jon scoffs. _What a load of…_

“No? How about this, then. Why is it that people love life but hate death?”

“I couldn’t begin to imagine.”

“Because you are a beautiful lie, and I’m the painful truth.” 

Jon laughs and looks at Patrick for the first time since he came in the room. Patrick’s the beautiful one, he’s often thought, eyes wide and blue, framed by heavy eyebrows and dark lashes. Angelic, beatific, pure in a way that’s at odds with what he does. 

Jon loves him, can’t remember a time when he didn’t. They’re the opposite ends of the same thread, constantly curling and winding together, tied not only by what they are, but by who they are. 

“You’re a painful something,” Jon says, pleased with the smile that pulls from Patrick. “He's to be called Isaac. It was the last thing his mom said before you arrived.”

“Isaac,” Patrick says, almost tasting it. “He laughs, or he _will_ laugh. Is that right? You think she was trying to hex me away by putting the future tense into his name?”

Jon doesn’t think she was thinking of anything but those first and last seconds with her child, beginnings and endings, a whole lifetime lived in just moments. Her eyes grew unfocused, but before they closed, she looked right at Jon, her gaze sharpening, widening.

“I promise,” Jon said to her.

She said only one word after that. _Isaac_.

There’s a sudden flurry from below, a loud beeping that never means anything good, and the doctors begin to move with more urgency. Jon can only read their eyebrows because of the masks covering their faces, but he can see the rise and fall that means _now_ or _move_ or _wait_. He takes a breath, holds it until he has to let go. “Live,” he says on the exhale.

Patrick doesn’t say anything, just presses a little closer, and watches the scene with a curious detachment. 

“Live,” Jon says again, louder this time.

The operating theatre grows quiet again, and everything slows once more. Machinery and doctors settle back into a hypnotic rhythm, and Jon starts to feel genuine hope for the first time. 

Life might just win. 

For now there is nothing for him to do but stand with Patrick, like they’ve done many times before, on the sidelines of the battle between two worlds, helpless to do anything but wait.

One of them will have the infant very soon.

“...delighted to be able to show you this, Jeremy…”

Jon and Patrick jolt as a handsome man in a grey suit beckons another handsome man in a blue suit onto the observation deck.

“One of my first priorities when I became Dean of Medicine was to modernise the hospital, and this is the first of our state of the art observation decks. We are a teaching hospital, and above all we value teamwork and a sharing of knowledge and expertise. If you look down, you’ll see one of our teams performing a life saving operation on a premature infant born by emergency C-section following a tragic RTA that killed his mother. The tall man to the left is Dr. Brent Seabrook, our top paediatric surgeon, and the doctor attending to the anaesthesia is Duncan Keith. They are assisted by… Jesus Fuhhh… _Jesus_. What the hell are you two doing here?”

“Watching,” Jon answers.

“Waiting,” Patrick adds.

“You damn near gave me a heart attack,” Sharpy says, running his hand over his chest. “This is our new Chairperson of the Board, Jeremy Colliton. Jeremy, this is Doctor Jonathan Toews, and Doctor Patrick Kane.”

The three of them nod at each other, the blood on Jon’s scrubs enough to stave away any actual physical contact from Colliton.

“Jon is our most senior obstetrician, and Patrick is our only pathologist,” Sharpy continues. “Collectively they’re known as Doctors Life and Death.”

Jeremy’s face clouds and then clears. “Oh, because one does births and the other does autopsies.”

“Exactly,” Sharpy says, talking like Jon and Patrick aren’t right there. “It’s funny because they’re married.” When Jeremy looks confused, Sharpy clarifies. “To each other. They’re married to each other.”

Jon and Patrick dutifully hold up their left hands, showing off their wedding bands. Jeremy laughs dutifully in response, and leaves with Sharpy. When Jon turns back, he’s just in time to see Seabs look up at them, giving a double thumbs-up. Jon presses his palms against the window, his whole body sagging with sudden relief. Patrick jostles him gently, smiling genuinely.

“To the victor go the spoils. He’s all yours.”

“Yeah.” He’ll bring Isaac to NICU himself, oversee the transfer to paeds. But first, he wraps an arm around Patrick’s waist, drops his head to nose his way into Patrick’s neck, seeking out the comfort of his carotid pulse. He feels as much as hears Patrick say, “I’m glad I wasn’t needed.”

“You were needed,” Jon mumbles, pressing the words into Patrick’s skin. 

_I needed you._

*


	2. The Eyes Have It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is my Hawks!Win hopeful ficlet for tonight. It's also me thinking more about the Halloween verse I wrote last year. Featuring Drs. Kane and Toews, and a medical mystery ala House MD.
> 
> CW - some irreverent discussion of death/suicide. Fic takes place during an autopsy.

“I have a puzzle for you,” Jon says, entering the morgue through the plastic doors. They flap closed behind him, sealing him in. 

Patrick doesn’t look up from the clipboard he’s writing on. “Throw it over there,” he says, pointing a pen at the three carts of covered corpses. “With all the other puzzles.”

Jon lifts the corner of the first sheet. “This one’s an easy solve. Zero Apgar Score, so… dead. Ligature marks, no defensive wounds. Strangulation. Likely suicide by hanging.” He moves to the second cart. “Ugh,” he says, dropping the sheet as quickly as he lifts it. “Gunshot wound to the head. I’m not quite sure what the exact medical term for ‘no face left’ is.”

“Thanks,” Patrick drawls, making tick marks down the page of what is likely to be a pathology panel. “I can go home now.”

Jon pauses before the last body. It looks like whatever is under the blue cloth is no more than three feet long. “What’s that?”

Patrick looks at what Jon’s looking at. “That,” he says, tiredly. “Is the reason I’ll be having an extra glass of wine with dinner tonight. And why I’m hoping my husband will be super nice to me when we get home.”

“I’m always super nice to you,” Jon says, moving quickly away, closer to Patrick. Not too close, because of the emesis basins loaded with organs that are awaiting weighing and slicing. Everything is perfectly ordered, and so... Patrick. He has a reputation for being fussy, especially amongst the dieners, but Jon thinks that’s unfair. Particular is a better descriptor. He needs his surroundings to be neat and organised, and will grumble endlessly about cluttered workspaces and cluttered minds. He also likes structure, insisting on a mortuary uniform of navy blue scrubs and surgical caps. There’s a slight concession for showtime-type footwear, which today are deep purple sneakers.

“So my patient is pregnant,” Jon begins, and is cut off by Patrick holding up a finger before using it to press on the small microphone attached to his tunic. 

“The right lung is five-fifty grams, and the left lung is five-ten grams. The pleural surfaces are pink to dark red, and glistening. The lung parenchyma is pink to dark red, and congested.” He clicks off the mic again, and looks directly at Jon for the first time. His smile is small, intimate. “You saying your patient is pregnant is as useful as me saying my patient is dead.”

Jon leans back against the counter, crossing his feet and his arms. “She’s twenty-four, late second trimester, new to the area, alone. There’s a history of migraine and anxiety disorders, but otherwise healthy. She had a regular first tri, some NVP, tiredness, nothing out of the ordinary other than how much she’s changed her appearance over the past three months or so. Recently, she’s started to complain of confusion and general discomfort. I ran a blood panel, and it was all clear, no elevations, glucose normal. I saw her on Monday and she had a rash, so I did more bloods.”

“Fifths?” Patrick asks, wiping down the scales.

“That’s what I was hoping, but no. I called her yesterday, advised that she rest, and get in touch if things didn’t get better.”

“They didn’t?”

“Ambulance brought her in at eight this morning, and her kidneys are pumping out crazy levels of amino acid.”

“So she’s renals' patient now.” 

“Not really,” Jon sighs. “I was talking to her before I came down here. Turns out that she ran away from the father after he tried to beat the foetus out of her, which is why she’s been changing how she looks, disguising herself in case he tries to find her. And, unsurprisingly, she has trust issues in general, but…”

“She’s bonded with you,” Patrick says, his face fond. “Well, you will wear those scrubs with cutsie patterns.”

“Only to deliveries,” Jon reasons.

Patrick holds his hands up in peace. “Hey, no need to get defensive. Personally, I find them hot as fuck. I especially like the ones with little sharks on them.”

“I know you do, you fucking weirdo.”

It’s almost a sweet moment that Patrick ruins by slapping a stomach onto the scales. “And I’m guessing that she’s gone full-on mama bear, and won’t consent to any risky testing.”

“Or non-risky,” Jon says. “Basically, we have blood and urine, and that’s it.”

Patrick switches on his mic again and dictates some facts about the stomach's size and general condition. Jon waits until he’s finished and then says, “I’d really like to get a look at her liver.”

“Why? What are you thinking?”

“I’m wondering if the anxiety and depression aren’t symptoms of something bigger, like Wilson’s. The kidneys would fit, and the malaise, the migraines, the rash.”

“So test the urine for copper.”

“That’s a forty-eight hour wait for a result that’s probably not going to be definitive enough, and there are too many other things that cause elevated copper levels. Bloods aren't giving me anything certain. We need to biopsy the liver to be sure.”

“And you can’t talk her into one of those?”

Jon shakes his head. “Nothing invasive until after the birth, and she won’t allow delivery earlier than thirty-four weeks, which is another six weeks away.”

Patrick raises his eyebrows. “If her liver is shot, she might not have six days, nevermind six weeks.”

Jon knows this, and he also knows that if he doesn’t work this out then the chances are she’ll move from being his patient to being Patrick’s. And he doesn’t want to wait until her organs are weighed and sliced for answers. “I told her that.”

“Maybe you should tell her that an early baby stands a better chance of survival than a dead baby,” Patrick says, and continues with his work. Jon watches for a while, feeling soothed by the company and in knowing that Patrick doesn’t mind him there. Sometimes this is their version of quality time together. Jon doesn’t mind the morgue, despite the fluorescent lighting and the fridge-like temperature, and it’s not like Patrick can visit him when Jon’s working.

“We should go away,” Jon says. “Next month. Long weekend. Longer even, a week. Fly out to the desert. Catch up on some sleep and some sex.”

He can see the corner of Patrick’s mouth quirk. “Sounds nice,” he says, wistful.

“I mean, do you even remember what round two is?”

Patrick snorts. “Vaguely. I could do with being reminded.”

They could also do with being reminded of eating dinner together at a regular hour or not getting up until after the sun or not being dead on their feet when they fall into bed. 

“Hey,” Patrick says, cutting through Jon's wishful thinking. “I assume you checked for a Kayser-Fleischer ring around the cornea?” He’s peering into a basin containing a pair of eyeballs with the optic nerves still attached like tiny tails. 

“Of course,” Jon says, almost insulted. “First thing I looked for. And Jesus, why did you need to remove the eyes?” 

“Solving a little mystery of my own, Jonny. I’d swear this is shaken adult syndrome. Who goes to sleep with their contact lenses still in? And how did one of those lenses end up in her armpit? Natural causes, my ass. I’ll know more when I ...”

His voice fades out as Jon feels something connect. _Contact lens_. And, shit, of course.

“I’m an idiot,” he announces, and Patrick blinks, and then shrugs in mock agreement. “She wears contact lenses, but she has near perfect vision. So they’re not for seeing, they’re for changing her eye colour, to help disguise her appearance. Her eyes are dark now, and I’m fairly sure they were lighter when I first met her. Or it’s the other way around. The important part being that a coloured lens would hide a copper ring, if there is one.” 

Jon stands back, hands held out in triumph. _Ta-dah!_

Patrick shakes his head, amused. “You’re still not sure of her eye-colour? And yet, you could probably pick her vagina out of a line-up.”

“No probably about it, buddy,” Jon says. “And once again, this time with jazzhands,_ ta-dah_!”

Patrick laughs, high and happy. “I am in awe of your diagnostic genius, and also very turned on by it. Do you want to go and make-out in the janitor’s closet for five minutes?”

“We’re barred from the janitor’s closet,” Jon says, smiling back at him. “There’s even a little picture of us on the door with exes through our faces. We’re also barred from Sharpy’s office, the walk-in refrigerators, the pharmacy cubicle, the observation deck, and the chapel.”

“Worth it, though.”

“Every time,” Jon agrees, leaning in towards him. “Placeholder?”

“Placeholder,” Patrick echoes, and meets him for a kiss, and then another, soft presses of lips that really do feel like promises. “Go save the day, Superman.”

*


End file.
